In the opening minutes against Princeton — the start of a three-game, five-night stretch — the men's hockey team (8-14-5, 6-12-2 Eastern College Athletic Conference) took a severe blow when team points leader and Hobey Baker Award finalist Jack Maclellan '12 suffered a leg injury that is likely to sideline him for the remainder of the season.
"Jack suffered a brutal injury," said Head Coach Brendan Whittet '94. "It's a freak accident. First shift against Princeton, someone stepped on top of his boot and his skate and hit a seam and went right through him. Cut his tendon, cut his nerve and went so deep that it cut a notch out of his bone. He had surgery on Sunday, and I wouldn't expect we'll see Jack until next year."
"It's a huge loss," said Bobby Farnham '12 of his teammate's injury. "It's a little adversity for us, and we got to come together as a team. We got to have other guys step up. I mean, obviously he's our leading scorer, he's our go-to guy, and you can't replace a Jack Maclellan. So we got to have guys from all over the place step up now, and it's going to take a full team effort."
Without Maclellan for the remainder of the Princeton game and the following two against Quinnipiac and Harvard — two teams the Bears are fighting against for home ice in the ECAC playoffs — the team struggled, picking up only a single point out of a potential six in the three-game stretch.
Brown now sits three points behind Quinnipiac and Clarkson, needing at least a win and a tie against Cornell and Colgate this weekend for home ice in the ECAC playoffs.
Princeton 7, Brown 3
On Friday, Princeton (15-10-2, 10-8-2) controlled the game from start to finish on its home ice, dominating Bruno in a 7-3 victory. The seven conceded goals tie for the most the Bears have allowed this season, with four of them coming on the Princeton power play.
It took the Tigers only 45 seconds to get on the board, and despite a tally from captain Harry Zolnierczyk '11 to tie the score at one goal apiece, Princeton added two more in the first period to take a 3-1 lead. In the second, a Jesse Fratkin '11 goal cut the deficit again to two scores, but Princeton responded. Goals at the end of the second and start of the third gave the Tigers a commanding 6-2 lead and put the game out of reach. Farnham added the Bears' third goal late in the game, but it was too little, too late.
Quinnipiac 2, Brown 2
The following night in Hamden, Conn., the Bears again fell behind by two goals in the first period, but this time were able to fight back against Quinnipiac (13-13-6, 6-9-5) to rescue a point in ECAC play.
With Quinnipiac leading 2-0 with just under three minutes left in the second period, the Bears got the boost they needed to get on the scoreboard. On Brown's fifth power-play chance of the night, Dennis Robertson '14 finally lit the lamp for the Bears, as his long-range blast beat Quinnipiac netminder Eric Hartzell.
Brown carried its momentum into the third period and evened up the score four minutes in on a goal produced by a trio of first-years. Mark Hourihan's '14 close-range finish was the product of crisp passing from Matt Wahl '14 and Michael Juola '14, both of whom were credited with assists. For the rest of the period and in overtime, Hartzell and Mike Clemente '12 played strong in net, and the two sides had to settle for a single point each.
Harvard 2, Brown 1
On Tuesday night at Meehan Auditorium, the Bears again surrendered the first goal in the early going. On the power play at 7:27, Harvard forward Conor Morrison snuck in alongside the right side of the net, where he effortlessly tapped in a pass from the blue line to put Harvard (7-19-1, 5-14-1) up first.
Later in the period, Harvard struck again on the power play. With Chris Zaires '13 in the box for boarding, a long-range shot by Crimson center Alex Killorn took a fortuitous ricochet off a Brown defender and wound up in the net behind Clemente.
In the second period, neither side was able to find the back of the net. The Bears' best chance came on a four-on-four situation late in the period. With just the goalie to beat, Zolnierczyk blasted a wrist shot just high, and moments later, Harvard goalie Ryan Carroll, who had 40 saves for the game, made an athletic save to again deny Bruno. In the closing seconds of the second frame, Brown survived another Crimson power-play surge.
One shot glanced off the post before Clemente was forced to make two spectacular saves to keep his team's deficit at two.
Eight minutes into the third, the Bears cut the Crimson's lead in half on a brilliant goal by Farnham. The junior controlled the puck away from two Harvard defenders in Harvard's half of the ice before beating Carroll one-on-one. Farnham skated to Carroll's right and easily beat the Crimson goalie stick side for the score.
"I know Zaires chipped it up, and it kind of went off their guy into the middle of the ice," Farnham said. "I saw a nice seam and just pulled it back. I fell down a little bit, and the goalie tried to poke check. I was a little lucky with that and just went around him."
Brown pressed on looking for the equalizing goal. With just over a minute left in the game, Whittet pulled Clemente in favor of a sixth skater, but the extra man was of no help, and the Bears suffered their 14th loss of the season despite outshooting Harvard 41-20.
"I thought we were dominant for most of that game," Whittet said. "Our problem is that we can't score. We don't have naturally gifted guys around the net. We work very, very hard. We outshot them 20 to one in the third period and scored one goal. So until we figure out a way to not give up power-play goals and actually score on our power play, the result is going to be what it was."
